Psychoanalysis of Dreams, The

In 1940, in order to obtain the equivalent, in Argentina, of his medical degree from the University of Madrid, Angel Garma presented his book, Psicoanálysis de los sueños, for his doctoral thesis. Considered a classic of psychoanalytic literature, this work has gone through a number of editions in which Garma has gradually elaborated upon his differences from the Freudian interpretation of dreams as wish fulfillments.

According to Garma, the dreamer's thoughts, originating in repressed content, present hallucinatory characteristics. In becoming conscious, these thoughts inform the manifest dream. They are related to highly traumatic psychic content. The ego seeks to protect itself by masking such contents. It transforms them into what appear to be wish fulfillments, but which are in fact satisfactions more characteristic of mania.

This theory maintains that the traumatic situation that causes dreams ends up as a hallucination when the charge of the repressed content is stronger than the weakened counter-charge of the sleeping ego. These contents give the ego the impression that they correspond to current situations in the real world. In Garma's view this is a phenomenon that occurs in a way diametrically opposed to that described by Freud describes it in his theory of reality-testing.

GILDA SABSAY FOKS

See also: Argentina; Garma, Angel.